Climate Survey
The DEI Committee conducts annual climate surveys to better understand the goals and experiences of students, staff, and faculty in our department. We use the data from these surveys to inform our priorities for the year, identify areas of concern to discuss and make plans to address in our Annual DEI Feedback and Improvement Faculty Meeting, and guide how we support the department in our collective work to build an antiracist and inclusive community.
You're welcome to adapt our survey for use in another organization, but please read the following carefully before doing so.
Confidentiality and Data Interpretation
(1) We separated these two surveys because some combinations of responses to the first one (that asks about identities) can make participants identifiable (e.g., if there is only one Black woman student in a department, her responses will be identifiable). We wanted students to be able to answer the second survey without being identifiable. The downside of this approach is that you can't use responses to the identification questions to contextualize responses to the climate questions.
(2) If you decide to ask identity and climate questions in separate surveys, like we did, it's essential to look at the actual frequencies of responses to the climate questions and not just the mean. For example, a highly positive mean response to an item asking how supportive the society is to members who identify as Black means something very different if everyone gives a high response vs. if most people give a high response and a small set of people give a very low response (because the latter may indicate that the relatively few Black members are having a very different experience from what the rest of the society imagines).
(3) It's very important to be clear with respondents about who will see their data and how the data will be de-identified, and to follow through carefully on what is promised. For example, we decided that the DEI Chair would collect the data and then de-identify before sharing with anyone else, which means that she removed IP addresses (collected by Qualtrics) but also that she separated out the responses to different identity questions before sharing with the DEI committee (again, so that people's combination of responses couldn't identify them).
Identity and Climate Surveys
Identity Survey for Graduate Students (Word doc)
2021-2022 Climate Survey for All Department Members (Word doc)
